In an effort to maximize the amount of federal funds it receives, the Honolulu City Council is considering creating three full-time positions dedicated to applying for competitive federal grants in coordination with the mayor’s office.

The proposal comes at a crucial time when Congress is considering a massive federal infrastructure bill and Hawaii has direct representation in the federal appropriations process in both the House and Senate for the first time in decades.

In her city budget amendments, Councilwoman Esther Kiaaina, who represents the Kaneohe area, wanted to see $300,000 allocated to the Office of Economic Revitalization for the three federal grant positions.

“I think $300,000 is nothing compared to the rate of return of what we can get,” she said.

There are two types of federal grants: block grants or formula grants that states and counties get just by meeting certain criteria, and competitive grants for which localities submit competing requests for federal resources.

Kiaaina said there have been a number of competitive federal grants the county was unable to apply for or was unaware of because of the lack of dedicated staff. As it now stands, individual departments are left on their own to identify and apply for appropriate grants. Kiaaina explained that some departments have grant writers and others do not, so success in applying for federal grants varies.

“If they did a survey right now and ask each department to quantify what they received in 2020 from competitive grants, I’m confident it would be in the tens of millions of dollars,” she said. “That’s only that realm; think about the realm where they didn’t apply.”

The new positions also would monitor city departments to ensure funding opportunities are not lost.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D- Hawaii, who is on the House Committee on Appropriations, was supportive of the idea.

“I’m focused on competitive grant awards, which are somewhere in the range of about 1,300 federal grant programs that have funding that is administered and distributed throughout the country on a competitive basis,” he said.

“So how good are you at identifying that there is a match with a federal competitive grant that you might be able to go after? … Do you have the raw staff resources to go out there and actually assemble all of the information and track the grant all the way through? And do you have the knowledge of the federal government?”

Case thinks it also would be helpful to have a single clearinghouse he could contact to coordinate efforts for federal funding, instead of communicating with each department separately.

“A lot of what I do in my office is I try to, I guess I would say, be a federal funding matchmaker. What are the federal funding sources? And how can I match those to needs in Hawaii?” he said.

“The federal funding sources don’t always know what the needs in Hawaii are. And the Hawaii needs don’t always know that there are federal funding opportunities. So if I can do that through a one-stop shop, that’s so much easier and more productive than having to do it across each of the city departments.”

Case pointed to the University of Hawaii as an example of a place that is good at securing competitive federal grants.

Vassilis Syrmos, UH’s vice president for research and innovation, said the university is able to do so well because of its intellectual resources, which include experienced grant-writing faculty. The university is also good at identifying funding opportunities within the federal government and then effectively executing programs.

“I don’t want to give advice to people, but what I would recommend is, what are the top priorities of the city? And how can you match those priorities to federal funds and try to find the agencies that are actually funding those challenges or those issues?” he said.

“Then you hire people to be your grant writers and to be your ambassadors.”

These positions are not meant to be entry-level jobs. The qualifications needed to effectively execute job duties in these types of positions are high.

“You would look for people that have probably held positions in the federal agencies that you would look to get money from so they understand the grant process, and they understand what motivates an agency to release funds for specific problems,” Syrmos said.

The amended budget that the Council recently passed back into committee included only $100,000 for the positions. Kiaaina is pushing for the full $300,000 for three positions.

“In talking to experts … they told me even one person will not get the job done,” she said.

She will offer the amendment again for the next formal hearing on the budget, which is expected to happen May 11.